Lawyer clarifies Walker not target

A Wisconsin special prosecutor clarified Thursday that GOP Gov. Scott Walker was not the target of his investigation into what he described in earlier court papers as a “criminal scheme.”

Francis Schmitz, who is being accused of prosecutorial misconduct by one of the conservative groups he subpoenaed, had his own lawyer put out a statement saying that he “has made no conclusions as to whether there is sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime.”

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A U.S. district judge halted Schmitz’s John Doe investigation last month, a ruling now being reviewed by the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. Last week, the appellate judge unsealed the legal back-and-forth — including Schmitz’s plea to move forward with his inquiry.

“At the time the investigation was halted, Governor Walker was not a target of the investigation,” Schmitz lawyer Randall Crocker wrote in a one-page statement. “At no time has he been served with a subpoena.”

The declaration came just hours after Mary Burke, the Democrat challenging Walker in this fall’s gubernatorial election, launched an attack ad to highlight the media coverage of the “criminal scheme” news and other bad economic reports.

“Scott Walker just isn’t working for you,” a narrator says.

Walker’s campaign responded with a call on Burke to take down the ad and an attack on the media for what it sees as last week’s pile-on.

“Mary Burke’s ad is slanderous at best, and it should [be] pulled from the airwaves immediately,” said Walker campaign manager Stephan Thompson. “Failure to remove this ad would be dishonest and misleading to Wisconsin voters by furthering baseless allegations and inaccurate reporting.”

Schmitz laid out evidence in a December motion of intense coordination among outside groups and a paid adviser to the governor, including an email from Walker to Republican strategist Karl Rove.

“In recent days, the documents and the allegations contained within, have received significant media coverage,” said Crocker. “Contained in the documents is a reference to the request for production of documents that relates to an alleged criminal scheme. Governor Walker’s name was included in this reference. While these documents outlined the prosecutor’s legal theory, they did not establish the existence of a crime; rather, they were arguments in support of further investigation to determine if criminal charges against any person or entity are warranted.”

“Mr. Schmitz has made no conclusion as to whether there is sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime,” he added.

Schmitz also never intended for that filing to become public, his lawyer said.

Schmitz, who spent 30 years in the Wisconsin U.S. attorney’s office, was appointed by a judge last summer to lead a joint effort by five liberal counties into whether campaign finance laws were violated during the contentious recall elections of 2011 and 2012.